Five Years On
by youre-a-toaster
Summary: I was strolling through my documents and I found this. Future fic. One shot.


_A/N: So, I wrote this two years ago for my English coursework and I figure I can upload it now because it's all been graded and forgotten and whatnot, I don't know :')_

_Anyway, it's just what I had in my mind after reading The Amber Spyglass._

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><p><strong>Five Years On<strong>

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><p>The years had dragged on, every day feeling longer and longer, especially for Will Parry. Mary Malone had stuck to her promise, she took care of Will as she had said she would, she had helped him care for his mother and together they made it through the worst.<p>

Elaine Parry was at Mrs Cooper's, just as Will had left her before he had ran away and started his journey at Cittàgazze. His old piano teacher asked no questions as Will took his mother by the hand and back to Mary's flat. Elaine never asked where he had been, in fact, she hardly talked at all. There was an absence in her eyes, like she wasn't there. The fact was: she had already gone before she had even died.

Mary was fined for destroying the lab equipment, but nothing more, and they never found Will for what he had done. Together, they made a good team. Keeping each other's head's above the water when things got too rough, they got through. Mary never went back to her research of Dark Matter at the lab; instead she started working at Oxford University. But she never continued her research on the shadows; she had found out everything she ever needed to with the Mulefa. Instead she continued her life, back to how it was before the shadows, and before she had gone through the window to another world. It was never easy for Mary, but she learnt to cope.

Will never had. He tried his best to continue normally for his mother's sake, but after she passed away, he couldn't find much reason anymore. With no other living relatives Mary had filled out all the necessary paperwork for the social services and before long he was left completely in her custody. She made sure he continued his school years and achieved the necessary grades for the future to get a good job and to start his life again. But Will just wasn't interested in starting another life. He wanted his old life back; the life under the stars of another world.

Presently, Will was sleeping in his small box room in Mary's flat which was now also his. His straight black eyebrows were turned down in a frown, a slight sheen of sweat on his forehead; he was dreaming.

_Lyra's face swam before him, her deep blue eyes were burning into his and her muddy blonde hair was wildly framing her face. Will felt a smile creep up on his lips; his love was standing in front of him. He reached his hand out to touch her; he loved the softness of her skin. He was inches away… _

_But then his hand touched something hard and cold: glass. He tried his other hand, glass again. A single tear crept down Lyra's cheek as she gave him a sad smile. She placed her hand on the glass separating them both, placing her hand where his was. Will was starting to get anxious, his arms yearning for hers, he needed to touch her. He crept his fingertips over the glass, trying to find a flaw in its smooth form._

_He suddenly felt something forced into his hand; a knife, he held it in front of him as he examined the blade he knew so well, the hundreds of colours reflecting from the foreign metal._

_Lyra mouthed something to Will, he couldn't hear her; the glass was too thick. He wanted so much to hear her voice. He pressed the sharpest side of the knife against the glass, about to press it in and cut through. He felt a sharp tug in his arm as the blade shattered to a thousand tiny pieces at his feet. Another tear escaped from Lyra and rolled down her face. The just like that, the glass was gone… but so was Lyra. Will grabbed helplessly at the empty air as he tried to hold on to something… anything._

_And then he was back in his house, his old house; the one he had run from… abandoned. He was standing in the hall by the front door, he could see through to the kitchen, Moxie's food bowl was full to the top: it hadn't been touched, where was she? The paint in the hall was peeling… damp… the place felt eerie, almost haunted. The corners of the room felt like they were pressing in on him, watching him… draining him. The floorboards above his head creaked throughout the otherwise silent house. He turned back as a shadowed form by the stairs caught his eye._

_There was a man on the floor. Will's stomach twisted uncomfortably and the bile rose to his throat as he realised who it was; the man he had killed. His body was curled over at the bottom of the stairs, his neck at a gruesome angle against the table near the door. Blood was still pouring freely from his bashed in skull. His eyes were open… white. Will moved towards him to look at his face, but it was no longer his face, with a lurch in his stomach he realised it was the face of his mother…_

And then Will woke.

Shaking and drenched in sweat and tears, his dæmon, Kirjava, comforted him as she licked his face and rubbed her fur against his neck. She was still a cat, with beautiful fur in a hundred shades of black; she hadn't changed her form ever since Lyra had touched her. The memory sent another pang of devastation through his body as he crumpled and broke down in tears.

Lyra. Will's Lyra. Lyra who Will had loved and adored and who had promised they would be together forever was gone. She had been gone for five years, the equivalent of one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-six eventful days, or forty-three thousand, eight hundred and twenty-four very long hours. And somehow, the worst thing was, was that Lyra was alive. Alive, but gone. With no tangible way of Will ever truly being 'over' her he was basically condemned to a lifetime of heartbreak and the wallowing in self-pity over his loss, hoping against his better judgement that they would be together again.

Kirjava lay on his chest and rose and fell with his breathing, whispering words of comfort to him all the while he wept. She hurt too, being his soul she felt every ounce of pain he did. She missed Pantalaimon, just as much as Will missed Lyra.

"It's midsummer's day in the morning," Kirjava reminded him softly.

Will's breathing became steadier after the sobs subsided; at least he would feel somewhat closer to her then. He rested his head back down on the pillow and let his swollen eyes close as he drifted back off to a dreamless sleep with his dæmon curled on his stomach.

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><p>The first rays of sunlight started to peek through the gap in the curtain, bathing Will in a glorious glow. Kirjava bristled her fur as she started to stir and Will clamped down his eyes and threw his arm over his face. He had always been a light sleeper, especially since Lyra left.<p>

It would be almost impossible for Will to get back to sleep, so when he heard the footsteps of Mary down the narrow hall, he took it as his cue to get out of bed. His dæmon jumped down by his feet as she arched her back and purred before rubbing against his leg.

They made their way to the tiny kitchen and Will poured out his usual bowl of Cheerio's before taking it into the living room where Mary was already sitting with her feet up on the coffee table. She looked up as Will walked in and slouched down into the armchair, Kirjava jumping up into his lap before he started to eat. Mary could see how tired Will looked, he always looked tired, and his eyes were still slightly puffy from when he had woken up from his nightmare. She didn't say anything though; she just gave him a sad smile as he continued to eat his cereal.

Once he had finished, Will and Kirjava made their way back to the kitchen where Will slowly washed his bowl and dried it off before putting it back in the cupboard and going back into the living room. He sat down again as his dæmon jumped onto his lap and he rested his head on the back of the chair and closed his eyes lightly.

"Are you going to the garden today?" Mary asked through the silence. She already knew the answer. She knew Will had looked at the calendar every few hours over the past month, hopefully willing the days forward.

The moment had replayed in Will's head at least a million times in the past five years; Lyra's parting wish. She had asked that he would sit on a bench in his Oxford in the garden for one hour every midsummer's day, where she would sit on the exact same bench in her Oxford, in her world, at the exact same time. The bench and the garden were just coincidentally exactly the same in both worlds, in the same place, where they could be together. Their worlds overlapped, never touching, like layers of tracing paper; it would be the closest they could ever truly be to each other, at least until they go through the Land of the Dead for the final time and turn to Dust, together.

Will nodded, still with his eyes closed, his head leaning on the back of his chair. He took a deep breath before opening his eyes.

"Yes," he said after a while, "what are you planning to do today?"

"I have a meeting with some scientists coming to my block at the university," Mary said with a hint of excitement in her voice while at the same time trying to keep her cool. "They said over the phone that they were very interested in some of the research I've been doing lately."

Will smiled, he was glad something really good was hopefully coming for Mary, she had been so kind to him over the years, and she really was very clever.

"I'm so proud of you," he said simply.

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><p>Will made his way through Oxford, not really paying any attention to where he was, just enjoying his own peace and quiet with his dæmon strolling loyally beside him as his feet carried him to the garden square he knew too well.<p>

He reached the small iron gate to the garden not long after leaving the flat. He pushed it open gently and shut it behind him while Kirjava ran a little in front of him, urging Will faster towards the bench behind the rose bushes.

"Calm down, Kay," Will muttered quietly to his dæmon, his own excitement pouring into his mind.

Kirjava ran round his legs a few times before running in front again. Will felt the gentle invisible tug on his body as his dæmon tried to move even further away from him. He sped up and moved closer to her, the years they had spent back in their own world together had somehow bonded them again, unlike when she could leave his side like the Witches' dæmons in Lyra's world. Will's mind wandered, were Pan and Lyra joined again too? He hoped they were.

The garden never really changed. It was somehow preserved perfectly. The flowers would die in the winter, but they would be back again exactly the same soon enough. It was beautiful. The smell was powerful, and the thought of Lyra smelling the exact same scents made Will happy. Hardly anyone ever came to the garden, so whenever Will went there, the chances were that it would be empty.

They walked through the maze of flowers and grass towards the bench nestled privately surrounded by rose bushes with different plants and flowers climbing up and covering the frame around it. Will and Kirjava stared at the bench when they reached it, taking in every detail, every same detail Lyra would be seeing. He took another step forward and sat down, he immediately felt closer to her, and if he closed his eyes he could almost sense her presence. He felt his dæmon nuzzle into his side.

"I can feel them," she whispered to Will.

"I know, I can feel them too," Will replied, sinking down onto the bench more.

Deep down, Will knew he should be happy; Lyra would hate seeing him moping around helplessly, but the thought that Lyra might be feeling how he was too was even more devastating. She deserved to be happy. She deserved to be loved. Even if she wasn't loved by him, or not in the way she needed.

Will sat with his eyes closed for quite some time, occasionally Kirjava would talk to him, but they were mostly quiet, soaking in the feeling of Lyra and Pantalaimon being so close yet so far from them.

Will was happy in the silence; it gave him time to think. What did she look like now? Had she changed much? Her eyes would still be the same, piercing blue. Would her hair still be the same? Would it be longer? Would she have had it cut down shorter? Would her golden brown locks be wild still or had she been taught to tame them? Had she have grown much taller? It had been five years now, so Will thought so. He tried to memorize every inch of her face; surprisingly he still remembered it, all of it: the way her eyes would crinkle when she laughed, and the dimple in her left cheek and the tiny freckle below her right ear. Was she happy...?

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><p>Kirjava broke the silence. "It's getting dark, Will, we've been here for hours," she said as she stood on her paws and stretched her back.<p>

Will reluctantly opened his eyes. It _was_ getting dark, he hadn't even noticed with his eyes closed. The street lamps were turning themselves on one by one and the solar lights in the garden were getting brighter. Mary would start to get worried if they were out too late, even if she did know where he was. He turned to Kirjava, her black fur was reflecting from the streetlights. Will was always in awe of how beautiful she was. He curled his left hand in her fur and stroked her gently for a while as they sat there just a moment more, wishing more than anything that they could stay on their bench forever.

"Come on Kay, let's get home," Will said. He unwillingly stood up and took a step away from the bench before turning back around as though he had forgotten something.

"I love you Lyra," Will said before turning back around again and walking away from their bench with Kirjava at his side as he left a piece of his heart where it would always belong.

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><p><em>AN: A review would be just lovely._


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